


One more drop of poison

by marshmallowfluff



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Eating Disorders, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, Fluff, Gaslighting, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, I swear the majority of this fic will be Throbb not just Thramsay or pining, Idiots in Love, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Implied/Referenced Torture, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Modern Westeros, Multi, Mutual Pining, Not too slow, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, POV Multiple, Physical Abuse, Ramsay is his own warning, Robb Stark is a Gift, Self-Esteem Issues, Slow Burn, Suicidal Ideation, Theon-centric, There will actually be fluff in this I promise, Torture
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-11-12
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-01 10:45:40
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 4
Words: 20,157
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12703413
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marshmallowfluff/pseuds/marshmallowfluff
Summary: Theon stared towards the picture on the wall.“That’s one of my favorites,” said Robb with a smile. “Do you remember what we were like, when we were that age?”Theon did remember. He’d used to cry at night, still, missing his mother and wondering if his sister even cared that he wasn’t around anymore. And Catelyn had been so cold and Ned so austere. Back then, he had felt like one misstep would have sent him packing.“Aye. We were little scamps, weren’t we?”“Maybe you were. I was a right sophisticated little lad.”“You know as well as I do that’s just what everyone else thinks. I seem to recall it was you leading me astray like as the opposite.”Robb’s eyes twinkled as he touched his finger to the side of his nose. “Pity you can’t prove it.”In which everyone always expects the worst of Theon, and Theon takes that to heart.





	1. Theon I

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's Robb's birthday, and Theon is alone in the crowd.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is sort of an amalgamation of book and show canon, in which the characters are their show ages, but their book appearances - except for Ramsay, who is more or less his show appearance in my vision.
> 
> As a preface, though we must wade through Thramsay to get to the Throbb, I promise that the Thramsay will be less than one fourth of the total fic, and the Throbb will be pretty much all of the rest of it. This will not have a "light at the end of the tunnel" kind of ending, it will have a completely concrete happy ending, in which the majority of the hurt/comfort and recovery happens in-story. So please don't jump ship the first few chapters if you're just here for Throbb, because I swear that this fic is primarily a Throbb story and it won't take too long to get there.

Theon gazed into his cup silently as the guests around him chattered. The mead he was drinking was heady and tasted of pumpkin, and the bubbles tickled his nose whenever he sipped. He wasn’t much a fan of bubbly drinks, but this was Robb’s favorite and the only other alcoholic beverages at the party were ale and champagne, which Theon didn’t like even more than the mead.

He felt isolated despite the moderate crowd around him, and he didn’t feel like socializing. He was standing near the fireplace, avoiding looking towards the people mingling around him lest he accidentally make eye-contact and encourage conversation. Turning his face to the wall near the blazing fire, Theon let his eyes drift along the photographs that were framed elegantly and hung precisely. The Starks’ lives were immortalized in those photographs.

Ned and Catelyn, seventeen years younger, happily clad in their wedding suit and gown, were captured in soft black and grey. A picture of Sansa and Arya, both clad in satin dresses and hair braided with gold ribbon – but only one of them looking comfortable with it, and guess which – was framed with smooth cherry. There was a picture taken in the mountains of Robb, Bran and Rickon when Rickon was only a baby still; the sky behind them was blue with sparse clouds and the wind had flushed their cheeks to pink, but they were smiling. Theon remembered when that one was taken. He remembered sitting with Jon and the girls as Catelyn Stark photographed her sons.

There were many more framed photographs hung throughout the Stark household; never more than five on one wall for fear of appearing ostentatious or self-important. They showed Ned and Catelyn and their children in all stages of life: dressed up and dressed down; happy, and feigning happiness for the camera. There were fewer of Jon because Jon wasn’t Catelyn’s, but he was still Ned’s flesh and blood and Ned honored his love for Jon and for his sister Lyanna by showing that Jon was a part of the family.

There were only three that contained Theon in all the house, which was generous and so Theon was obliged. One of those three was on the wall that Theon was currently looking at. It was taken nearly eight years before, one and a half years after Theon had come to live with the Starks.

Theon had been a weak child. As a boy, he had clung closely to women and shied away from boyish playing. He had cried too easily and was mocked endlessly for it. His brothers Rodrik and Maron would beat him for the fun of it, and his father had neither participated nor discouraged it. Asha used to avoid Theon and the boys’ drama, wanting no part.

Theon’s mother used to soothe him, to nurse his bruises and cuts and kiss away the tears that clung to his eyelashes. Theon remembered her love and her affection only as a vague dream of what was but would never be again; she had taken sick when Theon was but seven, and his father had her sent away to hospital. The most concrete memory Theon had of her was her holding him, fingers gripping at his arms so tightly the skin turned white, her tearful face buried in his hair and his face clutched to her bosom as his father yelled at her.

“You baby the child!” Balon Greyjoy had screamed. “It’s because of you that my son is less a boy than his sister!”

It was after Rodrik and Maron died that his mother got sick and suddenly Theon was left alone in the family home with a cruel and angry father and a sister who barely talked to him. Balon hit him for the first time the day after his mother was taken away to hospital. It wasn’t the last time.

He didn’t beat Theon as regularly as Rodrik had, but barely had there been a time when Theon’s bum wasn’t marred by at least a fading bruise from the belt. Theon was rather dim and didn’t learn his father’s lessons very well or very quickly, so he’d had to be punished often. His face had advertised a blackened eye on the day the police had come for his father, but that hadn’t been why Balon was arrested.

After Balon was sent to prison, Asha had been taken in by Uncle Rodrik, but none of his uncles had wanted Theon. So, out of the goodness of his honorable heart, Eddard Stark had taken in the son of the man he had helped imprison.

Theon had spent three weeks in the group home before Ned had made the decision. Back then, as a child, he had thought the long wait meant he was being punished; being taught some sort of lesson. He wondered still if that wasn’t true. He tightened his grip on his glass and focused his eyes on his own young face, which was smiling in the photograph.

When Theon had arrived at the Starks’ home, he had brought nothing save his backpack, four changes of clothes, and the fear that widened his eyes when he gazed up, up, up at Ned Stark’s solemn face. But the fear was assuaged in short time; the Starks were not like his family. Eddard did not scream at Catelyn until she cried. They had two boys, but the boys were younger than Theon and were not cruel. The little girl had been sweet and the baby had not been scolded when she wailed.

Theon’s stay was meant to be temporary; he had known this by Catelyn reminding her children, over and over again, not to let themselves grow too attached. She never meant harm by it, Theon knew, but when she said it in his earshot he could never help feeling hurt all the same. It wasn’t until a year and a half after he first came that Catelyn apparently had decided that it wasn’t temporary. She stopped reminding her children not to form affection for him. Not that it had ever helped anyway: Robb hadn’t listened. He had been determined to be the very best of friend to Theon, and he had persisted until Theon couldn’t help but love him back.

In the photograph Theon looked at, Theon was stood in the house’s back yard, grinning, with Robb by his side and Jon by Robb’s, and Sansa stood before them, Bran in her arms, with Arya at her elbow. Ned and Catelyn stood behind them, Ned with his arm around Catelyn’s waist and Catelyn with a tender smile and her hand on Robb’s shoulder.

Catelyn was never tender with Theon, not like she was with her own children, but she wasn’t unkind. She wouldn’t kiss the tears off his flushed cheeks as she did for Robb and the children when they cried (though he never cried in front of her anyway), and she wouldn’t brush his bangs out of his eyes or gently rub her thumb up and down his cheek just because. But she would congratulate him if he did well at school; and she would smoothe out the wrinkles in his dress shirts absent-mindedly and fuss over the way he’d styled his hair when they had somewhere nice to go; and, once, when Theon was thirteen and so sick that he thought he really might die, she’d made him soup and pressed her palm and lips chastely to his forehead to gauge his fever.

Theon never blamed Catelyn for not loving him. She was a mother first and foremost, and she loved so fiercely that he knew there was no one who ever did love anyone so much as Catelyn Tully Stark loved her children. She loved them so terribly it wasn’t any small wonder that she didn’t have any to spare for Theon, especially given that she already didn’t have enough for Jon, and he was truly her relation (if not by blood).

Eddard Stark was more of the same. He treated Theon with a bit more warmth than Catelyn, but Theon could never shed his trepidation of the man. Somehow, he’d known that it had been Ned’s decision to take Theon in, and if Theon had ever stepped too far out of line, it would have been Ned to send him out. Ned touched Theon more often than Catelyn did, but it was nothing ever more than his hand on Theon’s shoulder or his big, rough palms clapping Theon’s back; not the enveloping hugs he would give to all his children and to Jon as well. Theon had often thought that he would enjoy being held by Ned, never mind that his own father had never done the same for him. He had even thought that he would like to be held by Catelyn, despite that he knew it could never be the same as being held by his own mother.

But it wasn’t meant for Theon, and it wasn’t their fault. He hadn’t expected Cat and Ned to become like parents after they took him in as a foster son. They’d fed and clothed him and never beat him, and when Robb loved him like a friend and brother they allowed it – Ned even encouraged it – and that was enough.

“Theon!”

Theon turned at Robb’s voice and found his friend smiling at him. Robb had his own glass of mead in hand, his cheeks flushed from the drink, and the light from the fire illuminated the side of him that was facing it and flickered in his auburn hair. Theon couldn’t help but smile at the sight of him, despite the lonely ache in his chest.

“Robb. Happy birthday,” Theon said, and Robb beamed and stepped forwards to embrace him. He splashed some of his drink down Theon’s back by accident, but Theon didn’t mind. “Finally seventeen, eh?”

“I’m catching up to you, old man,” Robb teased.

“I’m not so certain that’s how aging works.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, I’m fairly sure that I’ll always be two years older than you are, no matter how many more birthdays you have. Strange, and here I thought you had fared better than I in biology.” Though Theon was two years older than Robb and Jon, he was in the same class: first, his mother had enrolled him in public school a year later than the norm, and then Theon had been made to repeat his first year of primary school due to being illiterate. His life at home had not been conducive to learning at the time.

Robb and Theon both laughed and then stood for a moment in silence, just smiling at each other as the other guests milled around them.

At Theon’s seventeenth birthday, there hadn’t been guests. But then again, Theon never had birthday parties. He supposed that if he’d asked, Ned and Catelyn might have put one together for him, but they had never offered and so Theon hadn’t felt he had the right to request. Not that he’d have anyone besides the Starks themselves to invite, anyway. He’d never been good at making friends.

What they had given him on his seventeenth birthday was a nice dinner of his favorite foods and an expensive bottle of spiced rum. There had been no fanfare, but they had smiled at him, and even Arya and Bran, who weren’t terribly fond of him after they grew from being little, had acted kind and wished him well, and after supper Robb had taken Theon into the backyard with two plates carrying generous helpings of vanilla cake. They had sat together and talked and laughed, and when they had realized Robb had forgotten utensils they’d eaten with their hands.

And then the following day, Ned and Catelyn had found him in his bedroom that he shared with Robb, and sat down beside him and told him that they would help him to find a job and formulate a budget for himself so that he’d be ready to move into his own flat at that time the following year. Ned had smiled warmly and Catelyn had put her hand on his forearm with encouragement, and Theon had never in his life felt so betrayed.

Theon bit the inside of his cheek as he remembered. He had always assumed that he would live with the Starks until his graduation. He hadn’t been foolhardy enough to suppose they would put him up after that, but... he had been hoping. He didn’t want to finish secondary school alone.

The week after his eighteenth birthday, Sansa and the children had given him hugs. Jon had stood back as Robb held him for a solid minute before releasing him with damp eyes, and Ned and Catelyn had smiled and given to him a bank card as a gift. He had come to find that for the full nine years they had him, every month they had put half of the allowance paid by the government for his caring into a bank account in his name.

It felt almost cruel, he had thought, that he was made to feel grateful for the kindness even while they left him at his small flat, all alone once they had gone, to finish the remainder of his two years of secondary by himself. He had reminded himself how the Starks could have passed him on to someone else after Balon was imprisoned; they had only opened their doors to him because they had expected he’d be gone within the year to some other family, after all. Despite this, they had kept him for nine, given him a bed to himself and never made him go hungry. They’d been so generous to put him up for so long, he had thought then as he began to sob, collapsed onto his sofa and buried his face in his arms. He was so grateful, truly, he had convinced himself as tears streamed down his face and his breath caught heavily in his throat.

That had been months ago. Theon was now used to his flat; to its single main room with the kitchen nestled in the southern corner – a square of linoleum on the floor, a few feet of white plastic countertop in which was set a metal sink and a stovetop with two gas burners, and a dirty white refrigerator – and a small bathroom with a toilet and shower next to the kitchen. He was used to having to wash his hands in the kitchen sink after using the toilet. He was used to eating his meals at the ratty table that sat in front of his sofa, and then moving the table at night in order to be able to unfold the sofa to sleep on the futon.

He was used to parting from Robb and Jon at the Tube to take a separate train after school had let out. He was used to working at the Nando’s down the block from his flat for seven hours after classes, and then getting home at thirty to midnight and falling onto his futon – sometimes without bothering to unfold the sofa first – after removing all his clothes as to not get the cushion get any dirtier than it already was. He was used to waking only five hours later to complete his school work and break his fast before taking the Tube to his classes.

Theon gazed upon Robb’s smiling face and clenched his jaw, the knot in his throat thickening. Theon was used now to waking up alone and eating alone and falling asleep alone. But he wasn’t used to coming back to the house that he had considered home for the past nine years and feeling like a guest in it. He wondered if Robb would feel that way in a year after he finished school and moved on to university. Somehow, he doubted it; Robb would always belong in the Stark household. He was a Stark: flesh, blood and soul. Perhaps Theon had always been a guest, here.

“What are you thinking?” Robb asked, sounding suddenly affectionate, his eyes softening, the humor gone. He was still very close to Theon, having only just pulled away after embracing him. Theon could but just lean forward and he would feel Robb’s mead-scented breath on his cheek. On his lips.

Shaking his head, Theon smiled. “Nothing. Just remembering.”

“Birthdays seem to be all about remembering,” Robb agreed, tone wistful. “My mother cried yesterday, looking at old photographs. And my father keeps talking about the ways I used to play when we were boys.”

“You’re still just a boy,” said Theon teasingly, and Robb pushed him gently with the hand he was using to hold his glass, again splashing his drink on Theon, but this time down his arm.

“Aye, but we haven’t snuck off into the trees past sundown to pretend to be adventurers in a few years, have we?”

“I guess not,” Theon laughed. Then he looked around at the party. “Do you want to? I bet we could sneak out the back without anyone noticing.”

Robb shook his head, and disappointment festered in the pit of Theon’s stomach. “I better not. It is my party, after all. Even if I didn’t want most of the guests that are here, it would be rude if I were to abandon them.”

“Ever the courteous one,” commented Theon, looking again towards the picture on the wall. Robb’s eyes followed Theon’s.

“That’s one of my favorites,” said Robb with a smile. “Do you remember what we were like, when we were that age?”

Theon did remember. He’d used to cry at night, still, missing his mother and wondering if his sister even cared that he wasn’t around anymore. And Catelyn had been so cold and Ned so austere. Back then, he had felt like one misstep would have sent him packing. When Catelyn had told the children to dress nicely because they were to take a family portrait, Theon hadn’t assumed that he was included. In fact, he had been quite shocked and delighted when Catelyn had said that he, too, should comb his hair, because he shouldn’t want it to be messy in front of the camera.

In the years since, after Theon had grown to realize that his stay with the Starks was truly permanent, he had decided that being frightened and mopey all the time would just make him seem pathetic (like Jon). Plus, the other children at school would already choose not to affiliate with him due to his status as a foster boy and child of the corrupt and infamous Balon Greyjoy; might as well have them not affiliate with him due to his brashness and impolite joviality instead. He had been punished for it, occasionally, by Ned, but the Starks never threatened to send him off and Robb, the only one who truly loved him, liked him very much anyway.

“Aye. We were little scamps, weren’t we?”

“Maybe _you_ were. I was a right sophisticated little lad.”

“You know as well as I do that’s just what everyone else thinks. I seem to recall it was you leading me astray like as the opposite.”

Robb’s eyes twinkled as he touched his finger to the side of his nose. “Pity you can’t prove it.”

“Robb, darling!” a voice interrupted their conversation. Robb stepped back and away from Theon to look towards the intruder. It was Lysa Arryn, Catelyn’s sister.

“Auntie, it’s been too long,” greeted Robb, and gave the woman a peck on each cheek. Theon attempted to pull away towards the wall, to go unnoticed as to not be pulled into a conversation. Lysa Arryn had always tended to show him a kind of affection that was... well, it was the kind of affection he didn’t want from a foster aunt. He wanted it no more now at nineteen than he had when he’d had his growth spurt at thirteen.

“It has been,” Lysa agreed with her nephew. “Made all too clear by how much you’ve grown since last we met. It must be three centimeters at least. What is Catelyn feeding you that has you sprouting like a weed?”

Robb laughed and seemed to understand what Theon wanted – he’d been there the time when Theon was fifteen and Lysa had kissed him too familiarly on the mouth while drunk at a party – because he took Lysa’s arm and began to turn her away. “Why don’t we catch up with Uncle Jon?” As they departed, he gave Theon a parting smile, and Theon returned it.

He watched as Robb led his aunt away. Theon felt like the warmth and light of the flickering fire was following him. Theon gave one final look at the portrait on the wall before leaving the room. He put on the air of someone who had a destination in mind as he walked aimlessly through the main level of the house.

The Stark household was large, but not entirely a mansion. The main floor was spacious, with a dining room and table that could seat twenty-two if needed but usually only had the chairs for nine; an office that was Ned’s; the sitting room that Theon had just left, which had a long leather sofa and three leather armchairs and a flat television mounted over the fireplace; two bathrooms, only one of which had a bath; and a large kitchen with soapstone countertops and a fridge befitting of a family of nine-now-eight. There was a basement where another sitting room was – it had used to be a play room, but only Rickon still had toys there now – and it also had the guest bedroom and the master suite where Ned and Catelyn slept and bathed. Due to the slope of the hill onto which the foundation had been built, their bedroom wasn’t below ground and they had a large window that let in plenty of natural light.

Theon found himself walking upstairs, retreating away from the chatter of the party. The top level was just two bathrooms, a studio that mostly Arya used to make her costumes (though Sansa sometimes used it to practice sewing, and Theon had used to use it to tailor), and the four other bedrooms.

When Theon had first come and Arya was still a baby, only Robb and he had shared a room. At each new arrival of Bran and Rickon, the last baby was moved out of the nursery and into another room. Now, the nursery wasn’t a nursery, but a bedroom that Bran and Rickon shared. Sansa and Arya shared the largest of the four because otherwise each might bite the other’s head off. Jon, the moody prick, had a room to himself – and so too did Robb now, Theon supposed. He walked over to his old bedroom door and opened it.

The room looked not to have changed, much. There were two dressers on opposing walls, though the one that had been Theon’s was now empty and had nothing displayed on its top. The desks were both messy, however, for it seemed that Robb now used one for work and the other for storage. The two beds still sat beside each other, separated by a respectable distance so that visitors wouldn’t have thought it queer for two teenaged boys to sleep so close to one another.

Theon’s bed was made, but the blankets were wrinkled as though someone had recently laid atop them. He walked over and let himself fall back into the place where that person would have been. He stared straight ahead at the ceiling and at the darkened wooden beam that crossed overhead his chest, and imagined Robb doing the same earlier that day, or perhaps the night before. Maybe he had just fallen into the wrong bed because he was tired – Robb did have football practice on Fridays, didn’t he? And Saturday mornings as well – or maybe he had come up to his bedroom, grass stains on his knees and dirt on his uniform, and had fallen into Theon’s bed because he hadn’t wanted to dirty his own blankets. Maybe he had lain here, fully clothed and with his sweat-damp curls pressing into the quilt behind his head – where Theon’s head lay, now – and the sweat on the back of his neck soaking into the fabric. Perhaps he’d thought of Theon. Perhaps he’d wished that Theon was in the bed, beside him.

Had Robb missed him? Theon had barely seen him all evening, and this year they didn’t share many classes anymore. Theon saw Robb maybe ten hours of the week, which sounded like a lot maybe but that was lesser than the length of some of Theon’s work shifts. Theon missed Robb. He missed coming back home– back to the Starks’ home after school and revising for exams in the sitting room, and irritating Jon and teasing Arya. He missed having dinner be made for him and eating with people who... who acted like they cared about how his day might have gone. But he doubted that anyone besides Robb missed him back.

“What are you doing up here?”

Theon craned his neck to look at Jon, who was standing in the hall outside the open doorway.

“I could ask the same of you. It’s unbefitting of a host to retreat from his guests.”

Jon grimaced. “They’re not my guests.” It was true: most of the people at the party tonight were family or friends of the Tullys. Except for Ned’s brothers, Jon had no one downstairs who cared to see him. Theon had known that, but he was feeling bitter and jealous and wanted to be petty.

“Aye, I suppose not.” It was as much an acknowledgement as it was his own answer.

Jon didn’t walk away, but Theon just lay his head back on the mattress. He watched the ceiling for a time and felt Jon watching him. It was nearly as annoying as it had been when Theon was still sixteen and Jon was surly and critical of his every move. _At least now I can just leave if I want to,_ thought Theon, though he really didn’t want to.

“Do you have somewhere to be?” asked Theon irritably.

“This is my house,” said Jon, and somehow that was the cruelest thing he could have said. Theon grinned and sat up, leaving behind the dent that Robb’s body had made and that his own had been inhabiting.

“As it suits you,” Theon told him, and he went to the hallway and passed Jon on his way to the stairwell. “I have my own bed that I can lie in if I want, and it doesn’t come with eyes in the walls.” He didn’t look at Jon as he descended back into the fray. No one greeted him as he reached the crowd again.

Catelyn’s childhood friend Petyr was speaking to Catelyn’s uncle at the entry to the kitchen; Theon had to excuse himself as he passed them. He planned to just grab some food from the counters rather than braving the dining room, where he was certain Lysa Arryn would be. But Petyr didn’t let him pass by so easily.

“Theon Greyjoy,” he said, and internally Theon sighed as he smiled his congenial smile.

“Petyr,” he said, and then to Catelyn’s uncle, “Mr. Tully. Are you enjoying the party?”

“What’s not to enjoy about fine wine and good company?” asked Baelish. “But what about you? I haven’t seen you with Robb all night. At one time I remember the two of you seemed to be inseparable.”

Theon didn’t like Petyr. He was friendly and acted kind, but he always seemed to have a genial way of saying the things that were most affecting in the negative sense. Theon always parted from the few conversations he had with the man ill at ease.

“I have spoken to him. He’s got quite the number of guests to attend to. And besides, I see him daily at school, and most people here only get him several times a year. How long has it been since you’ve been able to visit, Petyr?”

Baelish maintained cordiality, but Theon knew he’d quipped back in kind. Petyr was always loath to admit that he didn’t see Catelyn quite as much as he would like.

“Ah, you’re right of course. It has been far too long. Perhaps it’s well that you leave his time to his relations.” He tipped his head to Theon. Brynden Tully hadn’t said a word to him, and didn’t look like he cared to.

“I’ll excuse myself now,” Theon said abruptly. “It’s been a pleasure.” He turned on his heels and went to the counter, glad to be rid of small talk, and saw that only desserts had been yet to be taken to the dining room. Regardless, Theon served himself a bit of pudding from a tray and left out the other door that went into the back garden.

 _I don’t even want this_ , he thought to himself at the first bite. He wasn’t hungry. No one else was outside with him. He stared at the long shadows that were cast from the light from the windows. They shifted as the people indoors moved about. Theon took another bite, and then put the ceramic plate down on the step next to the door. He didn’t care if anyone stepped on it and broke it. It wasn’t his plate.

The streets were dark and silent as he walked to the train station. It was a kilometer from the house, but he didn’t mind; the distance was short and it wasn’t raining as it had been that afternoon. Theon waited for the train for fifteen minutes, standing at the platform with his toes just at the end, almost peeking out into empty space. When he heard the train coming, he leaned forward just slightly, waiting for the wall of air to hit his face; but when it was almost to him, Theon swayed back and took a half-step away so that his feet were on the right side of the platform markings.

The ride to his stop was fifty minutes, but Theon got off after forty and walked in the street, hands in pockets. He meandered, kicked at rubbish and took unnecessary turns until he was at the bridge which overlooked the roiling river. The bridge was empty, and his own footsteps echoed through the metal beams hidden beneath the pavement. When he reached the middle, Theon stopped and leaned his elbows on the rail to gaze down into the brackish water. It was black as pitch in the night, eddies swirling greyish at the surface. Towards the banks, lights from the surrounding buildings were reflected and twinkled like the stars that could barely ever be seen in the sky over the city.

Theon imagined jumping into the water. How many bones would break upon colliding with the surface? Would his chest cave in, leaving him to die choking on deflated lungs? Would his arms and legs shatter and leave him unable to swim? Or perhaps his neck would snap and it would be over in an instant, painless and efficient.

He liked to imagine the look on Robb’s face when he learned of Theon’s demise: it would be Monday, in the afternoon, after he missed Theon from the class they shared after lunch. He’d be wondering why Theon was absent, especially after Theon had left his birthday party without even telling him goodbye. Then, he’d be called out of his class to the office and there would be Ned, grim-faced, and Robb would immediately know something was wrong.

Theon closed his eyes and leaned forward so his torso was hanging over the chasm. He smiled as he imagined the shocked look on Jon’s face and how Sansa would weep like a grief-stricken maiden in the fairytales she so adored. Arya and Bran would be silent like their mother, while Rickon would wail. Ned might even shed a tear for the foster son that he failed. And Robb...

Robb had always been an ugly crier. His face crumpled up and his cheeks and nose ruddied with his sorrow, and he always sobbed silently but open-mouthed, and drooled. When he found out that Theon was dead, he would sob like that until he was red in the face and his head was aching, probably. The whole family would ruminate how they regretted the way they acted to Theon. Ned would think, _If only I’d hugged him like I did the rest of my children..._

Theon had to snort at his own fantasy. That didn’t sound like Eddard Stark at all. He opened his eyes and looked at the water again.

“It’s quite late, you know,” said an unfamiliar voice at his left. Theon startled away from the rail and turned to look.

The voice belonged to a man, older than Theon by several years. He had dark hair a shade or two different from Theon’s, and a face that was handsome in its own peculiar way. His lips were thick and glistened wetly, and his eyes were two sharp glints of ice in the night. The man’s hands were buried in the pockets of a black woolen jacket, and he looked casually at Theon as though it wasn’t nearing midnight and he wasn’t a stranger.

“I suppose so,” Theon replied cautiously.

“What were you doing?” the man asked, and Theon took his palm away from the cold railing.

“I wasn’t going to jump, if that’s what you’re asking,” said Theon with as much humor as he could muster. He really hadn’t been. As often as he dreamed of dying, it wasn’t the being dead part that he wanted, not really.

The man walked to stand beside him and looked out at the river. He shook his head.

“No,” he agreed, “I don’t think you were.” He turned and his striking blue eyes met Theon’s, who felt his heart thud in his chest. “You don’t want to jump. You want to fly.”

Theon’s mouth went dry as he stared at the man in shock. He felt suddenly small, although he was several centimeters taller.

Though Theon didn’t speak, the man smiled in apparent understanding. “What’s your name?”

“Theon,” Theon told him.

“Theon. I’m Ramsay. I would like to buy you a drink.”

Theon swallowed, and inhaled. “Alright.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always so dearly appreciated.
> 
> Please come bug me on [tumblr](https://goddamn-i-really-died-for-this.tumblr.com/)


	2. Theon II

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Someone wants Theon. Theon gets something that he wants.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter contains a sexual interaction between Ramsay and Theon - but this will be the most explicit sexual scene between them in this fic. In the future, sexual content of a Thramsay nature will be either inexplicit or totally off-screen. I felt this particular incident was important to the story in terms of showing the dynamic. That being said, the interaction is consensual, but the dramatic irony of it, and Ramsay being a jerk, kind of makes it squicky anyway.

The pub that Ramsay led Theon to was dim but crowded. He guided Theon to the bar with a hand on Theon’s lower back; the tip of his little finger dipped ever-so-slightly beneath the waist of Theon’s dark jeans, and the light touch sent shivers up Theon’s spine. For himself, Ramsay ordered a glass of port – _a strange choice at a bar, a dessert drink,_ and Theon was surprised they carried it – and for Theon, without inquiring as to his personal taste, he asked for a double of gin with cherry syrup and lavender bitters.

A part of Theon was irritated by the assumptive attitude, especially given such an odd flavor combination, but Ramsay smiled at him as the tender poured their drinks and leaned forward to whisper in his ear, hot breath ghosting across the side of Theon’s neck.

“You’ll like it,” said Ramsay, “And I’ll like tasting it on your tongue.”

It sent blood rushing to pool between his legs and Theon decided that he didn’t mind the boldness. He swallowed, and watched Ramsay’s eyes flick down to watch his Adam’s apple dance in his bare throat. The man’s hands dropped from Theon’s back, the tips of his fingers grazing Theon’s arse as he reached instead for his jacket’s pocket to withdraw a dark red leather wallet.

When Theon took up his glass after Ramsay gave the bartender his card, he put his lips around the two skinny black straws that were given him and took a pull of the sweetened gin. He didn’t like gin as much as he liked rum, and cherry flavoring was never something he enjoyed, but he found that the dark taste of the syrup and lavender was made richer on his tongue knowing that this strange new man intended to taste it off him later. And the cherry and lavender together weren’t as strange as he had thought it would be. Ramsay picked up his own drink and met Theon’s eyes with a grin, and then he put his hand to Theon’s side and stroked his thumb up and down across the silk of his shirt beneath the lines of his ribs.

“Let’s go someplace more private,” he told Theon. Theon followed wordlessly through the crowd of other drinkers, through a narrow hallway where the bathrooms were, and through a rear door to an outside space. The ground was irregularly laid red brick, and there were pots of unkempt flowers lining a tall wooden fence that marked the territory belonged to by the pub. There were less patrons there, a result of the chill carried by the humid evening after a rainy day, and it was quieter. Ramsay and Theon stopped at a high table, black metal wicker, that stood in the far corner by a lamp.

Theon had been visiting pubs since before he was sixteen. His first time had been with an older girl he’d met, who was nineteen at his fourteen and had fed him rum and colas until he couldn’t see things in less than multiples of three. She had fucked him in the bathroom and then paid for his taxi home, and he hadn’t remembered much in the morning. It hadn’t stopped him from boasting to Robb and Jon, though; Jon had blushed and scowled through his exaggerated retelling – embellished with imagined details that he couldn’t actually remember – and Robb had looked appropriately shades of disapproving and impressed.

He hadn’t taken Robb or Jon to a pub themselves until Jon had turned fifteen – an effort to escape any wrath from Catelyn and express some semblance of responsibility – and then he had flirted with an older woman, who’d had diamonds that sparked like white-hot fractals of glass dripping down her neck and a pale stripe of untanned skin circling her ring finger, until she had bought all three of them drinks (and cupped Theon’s arse through his tight trousers). That night, her blue-red acrylic nails had left crescent imprints on Theon’s thighs, Robb had averted his eyes from the waxy imprint of lips that had rubbed off below Theon’s ear, and Jon had heaved his guts out until the vein in his temple was throbbing and his face was red and he vowed never to go to a pub again.

Jon hadn’t, after that first time, but Robb and Theon had often crept out of the house through the door in the kitchen that led to the back garden and took a train into the city to drink and laugh and flirt. On those nights, they hadn’t acted serious or talked about important things. Important conversations were reserved for the dead of night in their room.

In the bedroom past midnight as they laid in their beds, the moon painting silvery stripes of light on the walls through the cracks in the blinds and their vulnerability draped in comforting shadow, nothing eased the tongue for naked admissions so well as the warm disguise of darkness. Not even liquor.

So, in pubs, Theon was practiced and comfortable; he was aware of his tastes in drink, and of how much he could consume before becoming tipsy, then sloppy, then pissed. He knew what kinds of things to say if he wanted a woman to buy him a drink, or if he wanted her to accept one from him. His fingers knew how to brush a woman’s hair behind her ear in a way that heated her groin, and his lips knew how to purse around the rim of a glass in a way that left sugar crystals clinging enticingly to his wet bottom lip. His eyes knew how to spot someone watching him with want, and his body knew how to stand and flex to encourage them closer.

But Theon had never had anyone look at him with interest in the way that this Ramsay was staring – at Theon’s face, at his eyes, not his mouth or his crotch or his arse – and he’d never felt like he wasn’t the one in control. Ramsay gazed at him like a fox watches a rabbit, with hunger and intent. Theon _felt_ like the rabbit: heartbeat quick, pulse fluttering in his neck, soft underbelly vulnerable and exposed. It was unnerving and strange, but exciting in a way that made him feel unmoored.

“You haven’t yet been with a man,” observed Ramsay as he sipped his dark port and leaned one elbow on the high table. He sounded certain, and it was true so Theon just nodded. “How unfortunate,” continued Ramsay. “You’ve been left wanting. I remember that feeling. At one time, I was afraid of it as well.”

Theon kept his posture straight and smirked. “I’m not afraid. I’m just impatient, and girls always come to me quicker.”

“You haven’t been to the right places, then.” Ramsay did eye him up and down at that, and Theon felt his glance move like wet fingers dragging along his body. Ramsay took in his clean black shoes with tapered leather toes, his fitted indigo jeans, his long-sleeved grey buttoned shirt which had the top three buttons undone to reveal a hint of collarbone, and smiled. “Lucky for me. If you’d been going to those places you’d have been snatched up long ago.”

“Is that so?”

“You’re a pretty thing with a story reflected in your eyes. That’s a desirable quality. You’ve been wasting yourself.”

Theon rolled his eyes at the line – a story in his eyes, really? – and took another long pull from his drink. The cherry syrup was heavy and oddly bitter, but the situation made his head feel light and his lips tingled. _Wasting yourself._

“I wouldn’t call filling a hungry cunt a waste, personally,” he said wryly. “I don’t suppose many women would agree with you, neither.”

“But it’s not all of what you want, is it?”

Ramsay was shorter than Theon by a few centimeters, and his hair was as dark but different in undertones – warm where Theon’s were cool. His jacket was open and showed a dark pink cotton shirt with a V neckline, and dark hairs were visible just over the collar. He was wealthy, Theon could tell by the quality of his clothes and the way he held himself. Theon was good at dressing in fashion within his budget, and he knew that the way he put together his outfits and tailored his clothes made them look expensive; but Ramsay’s clothes were obviously fine and his black jeans were a designer brand that Theon recognized enviously by the cut and the small embroidered insignia. By the fine lines near his eyes and framing his smile, it was clear also that he was older than Theon by years at least; in his mid-twenties, probably, and perhaps already done with university and secure in a full-time job that paid for his taste. He was a man who knew what he liked and took what he wanted, and he’d read Theon so easily on the bridge and then again just now.

It _wasn’t_ all of what Theon wanted.

When Theon was eleven, he’d had a dream that had left him shaking and scared when he awoke to find his sheets wet and his underwear sticky – a dream in which a man whose face he couldn’t visualize had held him tightly and kissed him over and over until his whole body was aching and the muscles between his legs had tensed and spasmed. He had wanted to forget about it, but similar dreams had happened again and he hadn’t been able to ignore how his eyes would flicker involuntarily over the bodies of boys at school and men in the movies and magazines. That was two years after he’d been taken from his father, and he still had heard Balon Greyjoy calling him a weakling and a girl when he caught himself having those thoughts. He’d kept them locked away, swallowed them until they sat like rent bits of tattered iron in his stomach that pained him daily. Theon had thought that it was the thing that would surely, finally, cause Ned to beat him, if he knew.

But the twisted mass of iron had only grown bigger and more tangled until at thirteen, he had confessed his shame tearfully to Robb one night as they’d lain blanketed by the darkness.

“I think I’m a deviant,” he’d whispered across the space between their beds.

“A what?” had asked Robb.

“A faggot.” The word was ugly and harsh, and it was the only one he’d known at the time to describe what he felt.

Robb had huffed a breath. “That’s not a nice word,” he had told Theon then, scolding but gentle. “You mean gay.”

“That’s what gay is?”

“Yeah. And it’s alright if you are.” Theon had been scared for Robb’s reaction, but the otherworldly feeling of a shadowy room at a late hour had encouraged him to tell. Robb’s words had made him glad that he did; the iron in his stomach had unraveled and begun to disintegrate.

“But your parents would be angry. I’m living in your house.” A pause, and then he said, in a hesitant and quavering voice, “In your room.”

“Our house. Our room,” Robb had corrected. He had continued, certain, “They wouldn’t. They’re our parents, they have to accept us always.”

“My father wouldn’t.” Theon’s voice had been lower than a whisper. “I don’t want to tell them.”

Robb had been quiet for a long moment, contemplating. Theon had almost been able to hear his own heartbeat as he waited for Robb to speak again.

“You don’t have to. I can tell them that I like boys too.”

“You don’t have to lie for me,” Theon had said, insecure, pouting out his lower lip and clutching his quilt tighter against his chest. He’d felt mocked, even if he knew Robb hadn’t meant it in that way.

But Robb had shaken his head, which was barely visible in the darkness but as a mound of curls tumbling over his pillow. “It’s not a lie!”

“So, you... you like boys, too?” Theon had been shocked and doubtful, but also slightly pleased.

“Yes. I’ll tell them, and then you don’t have to be afraid of it anymore.”

The corners of Theon’s mouth quirked up at the memory. It had been a childish plan, the one Robb had made, but Robb had been determined. He had done as he’d said he would the following morning: he had gone to his parents before breakfast and calmly told them – serious and freckled and mop-haired and with chubby cheeks still clinging to their baby fat – that he liked girls and boys both, in the kissing way. Ned and Catelyn had both been surprised and uncertain, and had told him that he would always be their son and that they would love him always.

It had been a relief, but a mild one, for Theon had known that he couldn’t entirely rely on receiving that same response in time because he wasn’t really their son. And he had laughed about it in the passing years, because it became clear that Ned and Cat had only been humoring what they’d thought were the misunderstandings of a confused little boy, and poor, sweet Robb hadn’t given them any reason to further believe it was true. As he had grown into the young man that he’d become, with deep voice and rough hands and unkempt hair, no one had ever thought that he might be anything other than perfectly heterosexual.

“Look at you,” Theon had laughed quietly one night some months ago while Robb smiled obligingly over a glass of mead. “You act like the perfect gentleman and blush when a pretty girl smiles your way, and have never shown any desire to bugger a bloke, and yet you still try to call yourself queer.”

“You’re one to talk. You’re mostly gay but you’ve laid with more girls than I have.”

“It’s not hard to beat a grand count of zero.”

Robb had licked foam from his Cupid’s bow. “That isn’t quite the point, is it?” He’d looked at Theon then with a soft query in his eyes. “Why do you do it like that, anyway?”

 _Why, indeed_. Theon wasn’t always certain. He’d first discovered that women wanted him when Lysa Arryn had put her hand on his thigh with hungry eyes at Sansa’s seventh birthday party, and even if Lysa’s hands had made him feel small and uncertain, being coveted by someone had felt good. And women were easier to find than men, and were less threatening than men even when they were older, and even if Theon didn’t always feel hot just from looking, when hands touched skin and parts fit together it felt almost as satisfying as he dreamed it should.

But it wasn’t all of what Theon wanted.

(In the dark of night when his body was sore and weary and his feet ached from work, he fell asleep on his shoddy bed and dreamed of big hands caressing his cheeks and a strong jaw with weak stubble pressing against his lips and red hair curling between his clenched fingers and blue eyes watching him with fondness and desire and love.)

“And what do you think I want?” he asked Ramsay and drank again. His lips were staining red from the cherry syrup. He imagined they looked sinfully tempting.

When Ramsay smirked at Theon’s question, the intensity of his sharp eyes and the hard curve of his jaw were enough to tighten Theon’s trousers. “Didn’t I say before? You want to fly.” His hand reached out and down and settled at the crease just below Theon’s arse and squeezed. The air escaped Theon’s lungs in a low gasp and he jumped: Ramsay laughed, pleased.

All of Ramsay’s attention was on Theon. With his eyes he was tracing the lines of Theon’s body, the contours of his face; he was observing his every reaction, interested and enthralled. It made Theon forget how it had felt in the Starks’ house that night, a guest in his own home, a triviality for most and a nuisance for the rest. It made him forget that there was a stain in his shirt from the mead Robb had spilled. It made him forget how close he’d been to feeling Robb’s breath on his lips.

“And what do you want?”

Ramsay’s eyes followed Theon’s tongue as he used it to pull the straws into his mouth for a final drink.

“I want to be the one that pushes you off the ledge.”

Theon couldn’t help but laugh at him. “You sound like a pretentious ass. Was that supposed to be profound?”

Something in Ramsay’s expression flickered darkly. “Not at all.”

“You surprised me on the bridge, I’ll concede to that,” said Theon, cocking his hips and arching a brow. “But if you want to be going any further than drinks, spouting faux-enlightened bullshit will not help you.”

Ramsay stared at Theon, and his fingers tensed around his glass. Knuckles shifted beneath pale skin. Something was discerning about his gaze, about the furrow of his eyebrows and the flicker in his jaw. Theon waited for his next response with a tightness of excitement in his chest.

The glass of port was raised suddenly to his lips and Ramsay finished it in one swallow. “Come with me.”

 _This is it,_ Theon thought, and his hands trembled. He left his empty glass on the table. The two of them walked in silence back to the bar, where Ramsay closed his tab, and then out into the street. Theon was led into the alley beside the building, where it was dark and wet and smelled of rubbish and sick.

Ramsay took hold of the fabric at the front of Theon’s shirt and pressed him against the wall of the pub. The edges of the square stones and the rough places where dried mortar oozed from between them felt hard and scraped at Theon’s back. Wet lips, thick and smooth, pressed against Theon’s and immediately parted them until teeth bit at his lower lip and Theon’s jaw unhinged enough for a tongue to force its way into his mouth.

Theon’s hands fumbled until his fingers found grip and he curled them around the collar of Ramsay’s jacket. The hum of the chatter and music from within the pub wasn’t loud enough to cover the sound of wet kissing and heavy breathing, and the sound of it, and Ramsay’s strong hands on his shirt, and the rasp of stubble burning his jaw, made Theon embarrassingly hard for someone so experienced. He jutted his hips forward, seeking pressure, but Ramsay pulled away.

His eyes were dark in the night with just a spark where they reflected the street lamp that was near the alley’s entrance. He licked his lips and his gaze roved over Theon’s face, focusing on his lips stained cherry dark and swollen, and at his heavy-lidded eyes. He smirked at the way Theon’s hips twitched forward and the front of his trousers was so tented.

“Yes,” Ramsay said, lowly and to himself, as though answering an unspoken question. “This is what you want.”

Theon let out a low moan, not involuntarily but to prompt further action. Ramsay’s smile widened, and Theon took it as encouragement; he reached for one of Ramsay’s wrists to attempt to guide it to his own crotch, but Ramsay moved his hands to Theon’s shoulders and pushed him down. Confused and tipsy, Theon allowed it and crashed to his knees with a small sound. He landed in a shallow puddle of rainwater. The fabric covering his knees grew cold and wet and the position tightened his jeans uncomfortably overtop of his erection. He tilted his head back to look at Ramsay’s content expression.

Ramsay tangled his fingers in Theon’s long hair and tugged at a handful. He alternated his gaze pointedly between Theon’s mouth and his own zipper and prodded, “Go on.”

Theon’s fingers trembled when he raised his hands to undo Ramsay’s trousers. Beneath the jeans, he put his hand through the slit of a pair of dark, cotton pants and pulled out Ramsay’s heated, semi-hard cock. A prickle of shame tickled at the back of Theon’s neck when he realized that he was much more aroused than Ramsay was.

Tentatively, he licked his lips, and Ramsay gave another, harder pull of his hair as encouragement. He started by jacking the length of him with a palm and licking a strip up the underside, then closing his lips around just the head. The cock hardened slightly at the foreplay, but Ramsay made another expectant noise and pushed forward. Theon took the hint.

When finally he put his mouth fully around Ramsay, the taste and feel was somehow exactly as he’d imagined, but hotter than his fingers ever were when he sucked on them at night while he fantasized. Ramsay crowded forward and thrust his hips; Theon’s head banged against the brick wall and he let out a pained grunt around the girth in his mouth. Ramsay grew harder at that and chuckled.

Theon was inexperienced. His hands scrambled for something to hold onto until they settled, grasping at the back of Ramsay’s thighs. He choked and made stupid, vulgar sounds that made him flush with embarrassment, and drooled all down his chin. It took what must have been close to twenty minutes, Ramsay’s fingernails digging into his scalp and the rough surface of the bricks behind his head catching and pulling out hairs. It was dirty, and more work than he thought it would be, and his jaw ached, and his knees hurt; but every time he looked up and saw the way Ramsay was looking at him, his flagging erection strengthened.

“I’m going to come,” Ramsay said at length, and brushed some matted hair away from where it stuck in the slaver dripping from Theon’s chin. “In your mouth, or on your face?”

Theon would have laughed if he could at such a ridiculous question and the truly pathetic selection of options. _Do you want a stranger’s cum in your mouth or in your hair? Do you want to be force-fed someone’s unwelcome seed, or a blatant advertisement to everyone who sees you that you’ve just been thoroughly used?_

Theon tried to pull back off Ramsay, but his head was already against the wall. He tried to push Ramsay away by the hips, but the man laughed, refusing to budge, and tightened his grip in Theon’s hair.

“I suppose on your face would be inappropriate.” He stroked his thumb along the corner of Theon’s mouth and smiled when Theon glared up at him. Ramsay began thrusting his hips, not quite forcing himself down Theon’s throat, but near enough that Theon started choking by the time he felt Ramsay empty himself at the back of his mouth.

When Ramsay pulled away finally, he tucked himself back into his jeans as Theon stumbled back to his feet, gagging. He spat the contents of his mouth onto the chilly pavement in disgust.

“Fuck you, shoot your load in a rubbish bin next time,” he snarled.

Ramsay grabbed him by the hips and pulled him closer as Theon struggled away, then cupped the front of Theon’s jeans and squeezed. Theon gasped and melted into the touch, and reached down, his hand landing at the crook of his leg next to Ramsay’s, fingertips curling under to nudge at the space just behind his balls. Ramsay massaged him patiently through the fabric until Theon was shaking. His knees weakened when he spent, and Ramsay held him upright.

“Seems to me you enjoyed it anyway.”

“I’d have enjoyed it even more if I didn’t have this vile taste in my mouth.”

“You’ll learn to love it.” The inside of Theon’s pants was wet and uncomfortable when at last Ramsay stepped away completely, and Theon was made aware of how cold he was, shirt damp from sweat and the parts of his jeans below his knees wet from the pavement. He shivered and straightened uncertainly against the wall, feeling suddenly dirty. “Shall I call you a taxi?”

Theon nodded mechanically. His knees, jaw and the back of his head were hurting and the buzz from his drink had faded. He let Ramsay take his arm and lead him to the street; a cab was idling outside the pub and pulled out when it saw them.

“Give me your phone,” said Ramsay, and Theon did. Ramsay dialed a number and Theon heard a vibration from an inner pocket of Ramsay’s jacket. “I’ll call you tomorrow, darling,” he smiled, and handed Theon a wad of cash instead of giving it to the driver, which made Theon feel strangely ashamed.

As the taxi took him back to his flat, Theon traced his swollen lips with his fingers and swallowed compulsively. As he shifted uncomfortably in his trousers, the inside of which was slowly becoming tacky, although thankfully the damp patch wasn’t visible due to the dark color of the fabric, he saw the driver’s eyes flick up to glance at him in the rearview mirror and wondered if it was obvious what he’d just done. His chin was dry but sticky, and he could smell his own sour saliva and could still taste Ramsay. It probably was obvious. The driver probably thought he was a slag.

It took him only two tries to insert his key into the lock of his flat. He kicked off his shoes and discarded his clothes during the short distance to the bathroom. His own dried spend pulled painfully at some of his hairs when he took off his pants.

The hot water of his shower fell numbingly onto his shoulders when he entered the cubicle, and Theon pressed his forehead gently against the white tile on the wall and closed his eyes. He remembered stubble scraping his cheeks and a large hand squeezing at his prick through heavy fabric.

It had been most of what he wanted, he thought, as he lowered his hand to stroke himself again to hardness, and came in minutes to a vision of warm blue eyes and dry, plump lips and a gentle, deep voice in his ear. _Most, but not all._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always so dearly appreciated.
> 
> Please come bug me on [tumblr](https://goddamn-i-really-died-for-this.tumblr.com/)


	3. Theon III

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theon's getting butterflies.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> No warnings for this chapter.

Theon wouldn’t have answered the phone if he’d known it was Ramsay calling. Not because he didn’t want to meet the man again; it had been a fairly intense encounter and he wouldn’t mind so much having Ramsay’s hand on him another time. But people didn’t want to do relationships with Theon. They wanted to do sex with him, and people didn’t call for sex, they sent text messages – or if they did call, it wasn’t in the early hours of a Sunday morning when most decent people were either sleeping or in temple. A call meant something a lot more than a request for a hook-up, and that wasn’t something that Theon would have wanted to deal with first thing on a weekend morning.

But the vibrations had awoken him with a start, him having fallen asleep the previous night without having bothered to put his phone any further away than directly beside his head. He’d woken up overheated and sweaty, with strands of his own hair in his mouth, tracks of drool dried down his cheek, a headache, and dry mouth. Half asleep as he was, he naturally assumed that it was Asha calling because he’d overslept, as was a usual occurrence, and that she was waiting impatiently in the street for their usual date.

“What is it?” Theon said when he answered the call, eyes squeezed shut against the light that had only just begun to filter in through the single, east-facing window of the small flat – which actually should have clued him in that it was too early for Asha to be waiting for him already. He’d attempted to instill a tone of vexation into his voice in the effort to further irritate what was undoubtedly an already irritated Asha. But it wasn’t his sister’s voice that answered.

“Is that any way to speak to a lover?” Ramsay sounded amused, but just the sound of his voice accompanied by Theon’s shock had Theon fully awake and wide-eyed in moments. He pushed himself up onto one elbow and took a moment to gather himself. He almost ended the call in a fit of nerves.

“Is that normally how you refer to a fling? I usually try to avoid the clingy ones.” He still felt surprised and suddenly nervous, but luckily it didn’t sound in his voice.

“You’ve got a sharp tongue, haven’t you? That’s fine, I do enjoy a challenge.”

Well, then, if the man wanted a challenge, he would have one.

“For someone who likes a good challenge, you’re not offering much of one, are you? What do you want at–” Theon’s eyes darted to check the clock, “– _seven_ in the fucking morning? You must be a fucking easy lay if you’re already drooling for it not even six hours later.”

Ramsay gave a laugh that didn’t sound even mildly offended. “I was calling to ask you for breakfast, actually.”

Theon was taken aback. Breakfast? People didn’t want to _have breakfast_ with Theon. The older women at the pubs flirted with him because he was young and handsome and made them feel powerful, and the girls at school who hooked up with him did so because they were the kinds who displayed like a golden trophy how they had conquered Theon Greyjoy’s (justifiably rumored) whale of a dick. They didn’t ask him for coffee, not before and not after. Sometimes he went with a girl for a week or two, but only because the sex was good and the conversation was tolerable; when it came down to it, Theon was, as Robb would put it, _mostly_ gay, and it could never go any deeper than that.

“You want to buy me eggs?” asked Theon, dubious.

“Did I not make it clear last night that I wanted to be seeing more of you?”

Truth be told, Theon couldn’t remember many of the specifics of the conversation they’d had. He could remember the thrill of being pursued by a man for the first time; he could remember Ramsay’s hands on him, and the taste of him in Theon’s mouth. He could remember what Ramsay had said to him on the bridge. But not much more than that. Maybe it was just that the whole experience had made him light-headed.

“I suppose you did.” Theon had sat fully upright by then, and his blanket was spilling over his legs onto the floor. Suddenly, there was a flutter in his gut that he hadn’t experienced before, a sense of excitement that was completely independent from any kind of arousal. This really was the first time anyone had ever asked him on a date.

“So then, breakfast. Shall I pick you up in an hour?”

Theon was so enlivened he almost said yes, but he remembered himself before he could. Allowing this man, whom he barely knew, to so thoroughly compel Theon to bend to his will naught half a day after their first meeting, would simply not do.

“I’m sorry, did I ever say yes? I can’t, actually. I have other plans.” It wasn’t a lie. In a few hours, Asha would be picking him up to drive him to the docks. Was there time for breakfast before then? Most likely. But Ramsay needn’t know that.  

“I would ask you to dinner tonight instead, but it so happens that I have plans, too. Lunch tomorrow, then?”

Theon smiled. “Sorry, mate. I’ve got school.”

“I can take you somewhere near your campus.”

“I’m attending Northern Secondary.”

There was a slight pause.

“How old are you?”

Theon let out a laugh. “I’m nineteen, you needn’t panic to call your lawyer.” He allowed Ramsay a moment to release a held breath. “You can take me to dinner on Tuesday. Seven o’ clock. Pick me up at my flat.”

Ramsay agreed, and Theon told him his address, and then he ended the call. He stared at his phone in silence for a moment, feeling giddy and anxious all at once. Allowing himself to fall back down onto his futon, he contemplated his situation.

He was going out for dinner with a man whom he had thought to be a one-night stand. A man who, if Theon’s judgement was accurate, was likely at least five years older than him, and obviously wealthy to boot – and was Theon dangerously close to toeing the line of becoming a sugar-baby, or wasn’t he? Perhaps Ramsay wasn’t quite old enough for that. If the result of their dinner date was just another lay, that would be one thing, but Ramsay seemed insistent that he wanted to _date_ Theon. Unless he was reading too much into it.

Was that something that Theon would want to do? Truthfully, he couldn’t be sure. Ramsay was compelling to say the least, and handsome, and interested. And the idea of there being someone who wanted to eat with him, perhaps even to eventually talk personally with, and sleep with – the innocent, tender kind of sleeping, that happened after fucking and involved gentle holding and soft kisses – was entirely too appealing. Part of Theon wanted to hold out for something (someone) else, but the larger part was excited at the prospect.

Being that it was only seven in the morning and Theon didn’t want to let Asha grow complacent by actually being ready for their outing on time, he allowed himself to slip back into a slumber.

He didn’t have visual dreams, but sensual ones: lips grazing his neck behind his earlobe accompanied by stubble, big hands wrapping around his thighs, soft breaths on the side of his face. He awoke again overheated, hair damp against his forehead, with his blanket pooled on the floor and an erection. He took care of it in the shower and then stood in front of the foggy mirror for fifteen minutes to groom his hair; he had a system of care that involved applying oil that made it dry silky and smooth. Truth be told, he had picked up the grooming habit from Jon.

Asha called just as he was pulling on his pants, and he let it go to voicemail to irk her as he went on to choose his trousers and shirt; but he didn’t make her wait too long and exited his flat within three minutes. Her car was loitering at the curb in front of the building, and he climbed into the passenger seat. As soon as the door had shut behind him, she pulled away, not even waiting for him to buckle his safety belt.

“You in a big hurry?” he asked, and Asha just scoffed, not taking her eyes off the road. “You know, I’m probably a good fifteen minutes earlier than usual. I barely made you wait at all.”

“Do you need a prize?”

“I wouldn’t object to one.”

Asha huffed a laugh, and then they dissolved into silence, as was their norm during the long drive. Theon gazed out the side window and watched the dirty streets of the city pass behind them. Bricks and marble blurred together, broken by the flashes of neon signs of restaurants and diners but then also the refined glass doors and front columns of corporate buildings. As they neared the edges of the city, brick made way to metal, and the skyscrapers shortened to stocky buildings, and then gave way to rolling hills covered by rocks and dry grass. The car veered around bends, Asha navigating the turns with the effortlessness of muscle memory: she knew the route intimately. The docks neared and the sky seemed to grow paler, and the dark masts of sailboats rose like arrow shafts sprouting from the stony hilltops. The sea came next, as the hills bowed away and the water was exposed through the spaces between them, opening wide like the pages of a picture book. On a day like this one, which was clear and warmer than the previous, the water was deep green and topped with foam, and the sun glinted off its surface and turned the spray white in the air.

The first time Theon had ever seen the sea, he had been far too young to remember it. He had been an infant, squinting big eyes that had yet to darken from newborn indigo at the big, bright water. Theon had learnt to swim before he had learnt to crawl; his mother had taken him into the shallows of a stillwater cove when he was only months old. She had held him on his back in the water until he had discovered how to hold his breath and move his limbs, remembering the instincts not yet forgotten from his life in the warm waters of the womb. Alannys had loved the water, the salt and the rocks and the sand; it had been where she fell in love with Balon and, later, her sanctuary from him. She had wanted her children to love it, too, and love it with her.

All her children had loved the water, aye, and loved their mother as well, but only Theon had loved them together. Rodrik had looked to Balon instead to learn the Greyjoy business as their father’s heir apparent, Maron had chased Rodrik covetously, and Asha had turned her nose and was keener to learn Uncle Rodrik’s trade; Theon had stayed with his mother. She had taught him how to read the weather by the taste of the salt spray, how to tell the time by the height of the tides, and how to wait patiently until fish swam up beside him close enough to catch bare-handedly. It had been nice, even if he barely remembered any of it now.

In childhood, Theon had thought his mother a sea nymph, possessing of some unearthly magics that let her whisper to the sea itself. When Rodrik had hit him or Maron had made cruel japes at his expense, or when Asha had ignored him, it hadn’t mattered: his mother had always been there to take him to the water and spin glamours from sea salt.

These memories were not as clear to Theon as those of Balon’s tempers and Alannys’s tears, but the smell of salt water and the feel of the breeze on his cheeks always brought forth fragments, susurrations that buzzed in his ears and fleeting images like soft kisses behind his eyelids. Wonder at seeing Alannys lift a fat, silver fish from the water in her cupped hands. The feeling of being cherished as his salt-stiffened hair was brushed out of his eyes by a smooth, dry palm. Feeling safe and solaced as he swam naked in black water under the big, purple night sky, his mother smiling at him, her dark hair wet and clinging to her collarbones and bare breasts. He couldn’t be sure anymore if these memories were real, but still he held tight to them greedily when ever they surfaced.

Living as a foster boy with the Starks had meant departure from the sea. The Starks were northerners, and craved the thin, crisp air of snowcapped mountains, not the salty damp air of the open ocean. They vacationed inland, where they hiked and rode horses. Theon had enjoyed these things, it was true, but something deep in his bones had always ached for the salt and sand. He was glad that he allowed himself this occasional respite with his sister, even on the days during which he and Asha spoke naught to each other at all.

The tires of Asha’s car crunched on the sandy asphalt of the lot. She pulled into her parking space, which was quite near the entrance to the docks but not as near as Uncle Rodrik’s.

“What are we taking out today?” asked Theon. Asha pulled her keys out of the ignition and hooked the ring on her finger as she turned around and leaned past Theon to reach into the backseat for her hat and sunglasses.

“Black Wind. Uncle is using Sea Song this weekend to chase whales.”

Theon climbed out of the car and went to open the trunk to retrieve the ice chest, which held their water and food for the afternoon. “And here I thought it was illegal to sell whale meat in Westeros.”

“He doesn’t hunt them, he just likes to follow them. He’s looking for a one in particular.”

The siblings, with their necessities in hand, walked beside each other to the docks. The sound of their feet on the salt-hardened wood and the gentle bobbing of the platform as the ocean ebbed and buffeted it was familiar. Black Wind, which had borne its name since before Theon had been reunited with his sister and before Robb had named Grey Wind, was tied at the furthest end of the leftmost dock.

“Looking for a particular whale? What for?”

“There’s a blue whale that he sees in his dreams. He’s trying to find it.” Asha made a noise that was amused, but when Theon turned to look at her she didn’t betray any humor. “He’s in love with it, you see. Or, they’re in love with each other, according to him. He’s gone out four times already, looking for it, but he hasn’t had luck so far.”

Theon laughed his incredulity. “And here I was thought Uncle Rod was our sane uncle. Is this elusive love a he-whale or a she-whale?”

“A lady whale, or so he says.”

Asha bent to untie the rope that docked her ship. Theon leapt to the deck and set the ice chest on the floor, and Asha followed and went to the mast to work the sails. Theon still hadn’t learnt how to sail, but Asha was masterful and could work her small sailboat by herself. When she was seventeen and Uncle Rodrik had given her Black Wind as a gift, Asha had dropped out of school and taken her boat out to the open ocean for five months, alone, to prove herself capable before returning to take her place in the company at Rodrik’s side. She had begun as a captain of one of the fishing trawlers, but had steadily climbed within the business. Now, she was beneath only Rodrik himself, and was the youngest ever to hold the position in the history of the eighty-year legacy of Ten Towers Fishing Company. One day, Asha would own the company, and it would be well deserved. It was all she had ever wanted and worked towards since when Theon had known her as a girl.

“And what does our uncle plan to do with his lady whale when he finds her?” asked Theon. He quirked up one corner of his mouth. “Ride her?” His tone was suggestive, and Asha barked a laugh.

“You know, I’m not quite sure. I don’t think he’s thought so far ahead. Do they allow marriage between humans and animals yet?”

“It doesn’t seem like gay marriage has quite snowballed to that as of now. A few years, may be.”

They sailed away from the docks and raced towards the wide-open sky. Theon’s hair was quickly tangled by the breeze and grew damp and sticky with sea spray. Asha’s was cropped short, and was hidden beneath her hat, and so she did not experience the same problem. As Asha stood at the boat’s wheel and guided their coarse, Theon rested his chin on his arms crossed over the rail and stared at the water as it raced below him, watching the foam lap at the boat’s hull and the sun glint and fracture off the surface. Eventually, Asha would decide to stop somewhere she deemed appropriate and sit with Theon, to eat some of the food she had packed and talk with her brother about the things that were happening in their lives; or, she would not break, and instead simply keep sailing until she decided to turn back, and they would spend the rest of their trip in silence. Both situations were equally likely possibilities.

The first time Theon had heard from Asha after he had first been taken away was five weeks after Theon had turned eighteen. She had contacted him over mobile, introduced herself as his sister, and asked to meet him in person.

“It’s been nine years with no word from you. Why do you want to know me now?” Theon had asked, bitterness lacing his tone. She had told him; she hadn’t had the rights to contact him when he was a minor without permission from his legal guardians, and they had never given it. Ned and Catelyn had never thought it was appropriate for his sister to be allowed to speak with him. Theon has never confronted them about it. It wasn’t for him to question their reasoning.

“I’m sorry, little brother,” Asha had told him. “I know it’s been a long time.”

Asha and Theon hadn’t been close even as children, and it had been nearly a decade lived apart; they were very different people, but they were still family. Asha valued that, and so, he supposed, did Theon. An effort was made by the both of them to grow a relationship that didn’t exist naturally. It was hard, sometimes, for they had only little things in common and both were short-tempered and hard-headed, but no matter what happened, they made time to go out to the sea together at least twice a month. If they had nothing to say to each other, they didn’t talk, but the time together still was spent. Theon and Asha were brother and sister, and over the months they had begun to truly feel as such.

That day, Asha didn’t stop the boat. She sailed them straight out away from the shore for an hour and a half before turning around and talking a more wayward route back to dock, taking turns to crest waves and catching winds that took them on several miles-long detours. When the shore appeared again on their horizon, it had been nearly four hours. At some point, the sound of the water and the wind in his face had lulled Theon into a sleep; it had only lasted for thirty minutes at most, and he hadn’t dreamt at all.

Instead of the sea, Theon watched his sister as she guided the boat back to harbor. Her sunglasses were dark, and he couldn’t see her eyes, but the divot between her brows showed her concentration. She always sailed with a stern focus, and on more cloudy days when she didn’t shield her face with her hat and glasses, the intensity in her eyes and the spiky fringe of her black hair – accompanied, of course, by her sharply hooked nose – made her look hawkish and bold. In a past life, she might have been a conqueror, an adventurer, a queen. Watching her sail inspired awe. She was a born leader, strong and capable; anyone would want someone like Asha at their side, especially when one compared her to Theon. There was no competition.

When finally Black Wind had settled into its space at the dock, Theon took the rope and vaulted over the side of the boat to the platform and secured it to the dock with the knot that Asha had patiently taught him. Asha followed him quickly, having collected the discarded water bottles from their voyage along with the ice chest. She was smiling now, the furrow gone from her forehead, and when they walked back across the floating dock towards the parking lot there was an easy roll in her hips that came from having been at sea for a day. It gave Asha a swagger, but Theon was still not quite experienced enough for it to look any other than mildly graceless on him. “You’ll get your sea legs in short time,” Asha had assured him after their first few trips. “It’s in your blood.”

Maybe it was. The Harlaws and Greyjoys both could trace their bloodlines back through ships and sea for centuries. Then again, if blood was truly so determinant, shouldn’t it be more highly valued? To go by blood, Balon shouldn’t have always looked at Theon as though he wasn’t wanted, and his uncles shouldn’t have proved Balon right.

Asha rolled down the windows as they pulled out of the lot and onto the road, and hung her right arm out the window. She extended her hand to cup the wind in her palm. Theon was annoyed.

“Is your intent today to truly and thoroughly fuck up my hair?” he complained loudly over the sound of the air billowing past the gap of the window. He pulled strands of hair out of his mouth and pushed others out of his eyes, but it was of little use.

“If it bothers you that much you could always cut it,” responded Asha cheerfully.

Theon tutted his dissent. “I look good with long hair. It suits my bone structure.”

“Qarl always says if your bone structure is strong, it will look good with any hair length,” was Asha’s retort. She grinned. “I rather think you just like standing out in a crowd with your girly hair, you nance.”

Theon felt a little lurch in his stomach, and swallowed. He pressed the button on his door to raise the passenger window, and Asha sighed and then ceded and raised her own as well. The noise of the wind gone, the inside of the car was suddenly silent, and although usually the quiet was not uncomfortable, Theon’s sudden nerve was making it tense.

“I’ve got a date on Tuesday.”

Asha raised her eyebrows at him. “I don’t need to know about each and every one of your hook-ups.”

“Not like that. It’s dinner. With a man.”

“Oh.” Her gaze turned back to focus on the rode and her eyes widened. She was silent for a time while she seemed to gather her thoughts. “Is it... the first one?”

He didn’t know if she was asking if it was to be his first date with the man, or his first date with a man in general. It didn’t matter, the answer was the same for both.

“Yes.”

They sat in tense silence for a few more minutes. Theon propped his foot up on the dashboard and drummed his fingers on his thigh. Asha seemed contemplative.

“Are you excited?” she finally asked, and Theon turned to look at her. She looked nearly as serious as she had at the wheel of her boat, the furrow back between her eyebrows. Theon thought about his response for a moment, remembered the phone conversation he’d had early that morning and the butterflies he’d felt fluttering in his stomach.

“Yes. A little nervous. I’ve never been out to dinner with anyone before.” It felt a little embarrassing to admit, and he normally didn’t discuss such personal topics with his sister, to be frank. They had only begun to know each other so closely less than a year ago.

Asha didn’t laugh, though, and she nodded. “I’m sure it will be fine. It’s not so complicated. And if the conversation isn’t good, you just don’t call him again.” A fleeting smile crossed her face then, and she laughed. “Unless the sex is fantastic, that is.”

“Is that what you do with your beaus? Drop them like a rock, unless they’re a good lay?”

“What other way is there to do it?” Then she turned to look at him again, a little contrite. “I’m sorry I called you a nance.”

He smiled. “Nothing worse than what our father used to say.”

Asha’s knuckles tightened on the wheel and she grimaced. “He shouldn’t have said those things to you back then.”

“Really?” Theon said with faux surprise. “It seemed like it was fine with you until two minutes ago when you found out he was right.”

She snorted. “Passive-aggressive fucker.”

“Boorish cunt,” he retorted cheekily.

They both laughed, and for the rest of the drive, Theon felt a great deal lighter. He smiled at the scenery that passed by them out the window, and Asha turned on the car radio and listened to bad metal music, nodding her head along and occasionally mouthing the lyrics. When she dropped him off outside of his building, he was feeling elated, and waved her away with a short goodbye and a grin.

The buoyancy only lasted as long as it took to unlock his door, however. As soon as he entered his flat and saw the sparse décor and the unmade bed, his mood sank. He spent the rest of the evening revising for a maths exam and watching videos on his phone. For dinner, he made instant noodles and cracked two chicken eggs into his bowl. The food didn’t taste like anything. He showered and carefully dried his hair with his towel and lay in his bed and stared at the wall.

He wished there was someone in the room with him. They wouldn’t even need to be in the bed, beside him. He just wished he wasn’t alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Comments are always so dearly appreciated.
> 
> Please come bug me on [tumblr](https://goddamn-i-really-died-for-this.tumblr.com/)


	4. Theon IV

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Theon has never been treated like this before.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A note on currency in this fic: this is my interpretation of a modern-era Westeros, so the currency is different. 
> 
> There are three different types of currency here: golden dragons, silver stags, and copper pennies. For short, they are referred to as dragons (or drags), stags, or coppers. 
> 
> A silver stag is worth here a little more than an American dollar. Twenty coppers go into one stag, and ten stags go into one dragon. So, for example, 40 dragons would be the equivalent of about $400. 
> 
> If you're wondering about appearance, only coppers come in coin form. Stags and dragons are paper with foil stamps on the left side: stags are stamped with a silver circle, dragons have a gold bar running from top to bottom.
> 
> No warnings for this chapter.

Theon and Robb didn’t share any classes on Mondays, but Robb found him during lunch at their usual table in the courtyard and sat beside him.

“You left this weekend before I’d even had dessert!” said Robb, sounding disheartened. It looked like he’d forgotten to brush his hair that morning, as the cowlick that he usually took such care to arrange was sticking out prominently from the rest of his curls. He must have overslept. “I had thought you’d at least say goodbye before you left.”

Robb really did look put-out, as though Theon’s absence had truly affected him, and it made Theon feel sorry, but happy as well.

“Sorry, Robb,” he said. “I wasn’t feeling well.”

Robb sighed and shrugged, and took from his lunch bag a fork and container of something that his mother had obviously made for him. Seventeen, and his mum still packed him his lunches. It was endearing. “I can’t begrudge you, really. It wasn’t like it was a rousing party, after all.” He began to eat. “I was stuck in conversation with Uncle Jon and Lysa for a full hour after I left you. I don’t think I could have gotten through it if I hadn’t already been halfway sloshed.”

“At least they didn’t bring their little devil’s spawn this time,” Theon mused. “He’s worse than his mother, I swear.”

“Not worse than you, though, surely.”

That had been Jon, who sat beside Robb with a similar lunch bag, but when he began to unpack it, it was clear that he’d made all the food himself. Theon rejected Jon’s statement with a blithe wave of his hand.

“Catch me hanging off my mother’s teat like an anemic little leech in my current old age, Stark, and I’ll accept it. But I can promise you, I was weaned before I was two.”

“Now that’s an image,” Robb cracked with a grin. “Theon Greyjoy, nineteen and nursing. Strangely, it doesn’t sound out of the realm of possibility.”

“Aye. I don’t know what kind of kinky shit Greyjoy does in his free time,” shrugged Jon. “He does like to have his way with older women.”

Scowling, Theon tore a bite off his sandwich and fed himself with his fingers. “I think comparing me to Robin Arryn, the whingeing little freak who threw Rickon’s pet hamster out of the upper floor window to ‘teach it how to fly’, is the worst thing either of you has ever done to me.”

“Oh, thank goodness,” said Jon. “If that’s the very worst, I ought to stop lying awake at night wracked with guilt, then.”

“You may try, but I’m sure your conscience will keep you up anyway. That is, if a bastard such as yourself possesses that kind of thing. I hear your kind is sadly lacking in compunction.”

Jon snorted. “It’s when you bring the state of my birth into an argument, Greyjoy, that I know you’ve given up on thinking of anything truly clever to say.”

Robb was looking between the two of them with hesitant amusement. “Now, boys, must you turn every conversation into a row?”

But of course they must. Disagreement was stamped into the very foundation of Jon and Theon’s relationship, surely. There was no one else in the family either one of them could clash with without the adversary having the upper hand.

They couldn’t disagree with Ned or Catelyn because both Theon and Jon had always been well aware of how imperative it was for them to toe the line. They couldn’t disagree with any of the children because they were older and not their true brothers and couldn’t be trusted (by Cat for Jon, by either guardian for Theon) to be gentle, even if they would never actually be rough. And then, they couldn’t disagree with Robb because they simply didn’t. But a good quarrel was an excellent source of relief, and the gods knew that Jon and Theon both needed it often.

“Must you be so rhetorical?” asked Theon, and Robb laughed.

Theon threw his legs up onto the table and crossed his ankles. Jon moved his lunch away from near Theon’s feet with a glare of annoyance, which had been exactly Theon’s aim.

They began to casually converse as they ate their lunches. At some point, the discussion turned to Arya’s next upcoming medieval fair, and how she wanted to enter the dueling competition. She was being prevented to by Ned, who wanted her to focus on fencing for now since it was less dangerous. Theon had nothing to contribute to this ordeal, of which he hadn’t been aware, and so lapsed into silence and finished his sandwich as Robb reluctantly defended his father while Jon passionately expressed that Arya was ready if there was at least a proper age group for her to fit into.

It had been Theon who had taken Arya to her first medieval fair. He’d wanted to participate in the archery competition and thought that Arya might enjoy it; he’d been fifteen, she’d been seven. Ned and Catelyn hadn’t known about the outing, and he’d been punished severely for not asking for permission, even if he hadn’t thought it would be a big deal. Theon could still remember Arya’s wide eyes as she had taken in the sight of all the people in costume, selling food that seemed so exotic and souvenirs that were like straight out of her favorite movies. She had spent nearly two hours watching a blacksmith forge a longsword in sheer awe, and Theon had spent eight silver stags of his own money to buy her a turkey leg that was nearly half as big as she had been. She had sat balanced on the wooden fencing at the side of the archery pen, tearing ferociously into the turkey meat much like a hungry wolf, and had watched as Theon dispensed his arrows at the target.

He could still remember her big, admiring smile when she’d seen him hit the bullseye, how there had been turkey flesh stuck between her front teeth and her cheeks had been sticky with grease overtop the excited flush. At least someone had been there to watch him receive the silver medallion, and jump around him excitedly to ask to hold it.

Everything about the whole occasion had left Arya totally enraptured. She had started fencing lessons not long after, and had begun watching videos online to teach herself how to make her own costumes. Theon hadn’t visited any fairs with her in a couple years, though before he had attended with the whole family several times before Catelyn and Sansa had grown bored with the whole affair. Arya enjoyed going with Jon and her father, now, or often just with Jon.

Theon bit into his unwashed carrot with undue force. It tasted like bitterness and nothing else. He wished Robb and Jon would change the subject.

When lunch had finished, he gave Jon his traditional sarcastic wink, and clasped Robb’s shoulder and smiled at him. Then, Theon finished the rest of his classes, and met Robb and Jon again to walk to the train station, and parted with them after the ten-minute walk to get on his own. Waiting for his train to arrive, he wondered what the reaction would be from the commuters around him if he jumped in front of it. The ones standing closest to him would probably be splattered with gore; it might be kind of funny.

As usual, work was terrible. He ate instant noodles for dinner that night again, although he was out of eggs, so it was even more pathetic than usual.

But the next morning, he awoke with butterflies – or perhaps a swarm of locusts would have been more accurate – and was aware of the fact that he had a date that evening before he even opened his eyes. Upon waking, he panicked quietly for a few moments. Then, he showered, dressed, and finished his schoolwork. He walked to the platform and caught his train. He talked with Robb and snarked with Jon and went to his classes. He ate lunch, and he took his maths class with Robb, and then when the time had come he took his train back to his flat. He felt like a fucking child with a fucking childish crush and it made him feel sick... and yet.

As the hour of the date drew closer, Theon carefully selected an outfit that would suit the occasion; something that looked expensive so that he wouldn’t appear out of place eating dinner with a wealthy older man. With charcoal-colored trousers, a plain white shirt, and the leather jacket that he’d devoted over forty dragons to – because it was beautiful and he was weak, and he felt justified because it had been discounted – Theon felt well-dressed and sufficient.

When Theon stared at himself reflected in his bathroom mirror, he saw a nervous boy with dark circles under his eyes, a jaw gritted too tightly from nerve, and hands that trembled just slightly at the wrist from his twitching fingers. At least the clothes on his body were nice and his hair was well-kempt. With luck, Ramsay would see something better.

Theon paced his cramped flat in his dress socks, shaking out his forearms and breathing deeply. In a fit of anxiety, he pulled out his phone and sent a text to Robb: an elusive “ _Wish me luck._ ” Robb was a good friend; within minutes, he responded unquestioningly.

“ _Good luck. Kick arse. Fuck it up, mate._ ” A few moments after that, “ _Let me know tomorrow if that helped._ ” Theon smiled and let out a long, shaky breath. At that moment, his phone began to ring, and Ramsay’s name flashed across the screen. Theon let it ring for fifteen seconds before answering.

“Yeah?” he asked the line casually.

“I’m outside. Are you ready?”

“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” responded Theon, making an effort to sound unhurried. He ended the call and tugged on his good shoes, and hoped that Ramsay didn’t notice they were the same pair from that Saturday night. Before leaving, he went into the bathroom again to examine his reflection as before, to delay his descent to the outer pavement by a few moments and also because he was still nervous. He brushed his hair behind his ears and then, with care, tugged a lock back out and let it hang in his face, just grazing the far corner of his eye; then, he exited his flat and went down the stairwell at the end of the corridor.

Ramsay’s vehicle was sleek, dark, pearlescent, and foreign-made. A luxury vehicle: without even looking within it, Theon could tell that the interior would be entirely fine leather. The paint was duochrome, black that tinged purple in a change of light. It had likely cost Ramsay upwards of five thousand dragons, although Theon had never been well-versed on automotive makes and models. It was nicer than Ned’s car, though, he could tell that much.

Ramsay was standing next to his car, leaning casually back against the driver’s door with his arms crossed loosely in front of his chest. He smiled when he observed Theon exit his building, and straightened.

“You look lovely,” he complimented Theon, and he sounded sincere and not leering. With a hand on Theon’s lower back, Ramsay guided him around the side of the vehicle and opened the passenger door for him, allowing Theon to slide into the leather seat. Theon made himself comfortable as Ramsay walked back around to climb in behind the driver’s wheel.

The car’s interior was just as luxurious as the exterior; the seats were of supple black leather, the dashboard black and matte with dark, lacquered, reddish wood detail. Theon ran his fingers delicately along the piping on the armrest as Ramsay started the ignition, which tumbled to life with a gentle purr that sounded vivacious but not annoying as many loud sportscar engines were wont to be. When the car pulled away from his building, he looked over to Ramsay.

Ramsay was gazing out at the road with a gentle smile on his face, but his eyes flicked to Theon’s for a moment when he felt Theon looking at him.

“Did you have a good day at school?” he asked, his tone clearly humorous, a pointed reminder that Theon hadn’t yet graduated secondary and Ramsay was likely past university.

“As ever,” remarked Theon. “We made finger paintings in Art class, and in Maths we learned fractions!” The faux-excitement in his voice, which leant to a childish tone that could have been embarrassing if Ramsay wasn’t amused, made Ramsay laugh. That was good; dinner with a man who didn’t appreciate Theon’s humor couldn’t be enjoyable.

“What year are you in?” asked Ramsay, once he had finished chuckling. “Are you graduating this year?”

Theon sighed and propped his elbow up against the inside of the car door. He absently took a strand of hair in his fingers and began to play with it. “Next year. I’ll let you know before you ask; my mother kept me out of school a year too long. Then I had to repeat my first year of primary. I can guarantee I’ve been nothing less than a stellar pupil since then.”

“I’m sure you have been.” Ramsay smiled widely. “Although, to let you in on a little secret, I was held back a year as well.” He turned again to Theon, and his strikingly pale blue eyes met Theon’s. “It was my first year of secondary school, though. Is that better, or worse?”

Theon gaped at Ramsay for a moment before smirking. “Worse, clearly. A first year primary school student is immensely less accountable for any errs.” Ramsay’s expression flickered for just a moment before he returned Theon’s smirk.

“What about you?” inquired Theon, then. “Was work well today?” He was curious as to what Ramsay’s profession was. He could be in a powerful position of some company, or he could just have old money. Then again, if he had old money, it was likely he was both: nepotism, and all.

“It was, but if it’s all the same to you, I’d rather not discuss it,” answered Ramsay. He tilted his head and smiled towards Theon again. “I find dates far more enjoyable when I don’t have to discuss work.”

This was understandable; Theon didn’t like to talk about his food service work any more than he had to – unless he was ranting about a particularly nasty customer, and that wasn’t exactly good date conversation. His worst stories usually involved some form of bodily fluid, which wasn’t the kind of thing one talked about over dinner.

He followed the tail of his train of thought. “Where are we going for dinner?”

“Have you ever eaten at a place called Highgarden?”

“You know, funnily enough I haven’t,” answered Theon, and Ramsay cocked an eyebrow.

“Why funnily?”

The car took a turn and they began driving down to the part of the city that was wealthy and opulent, with pavements that were carefully piss-free due to the direct expulsion of the homeless and drunkards from the immediate area. The storefronts became glass and steel, the walls smooth cement and marble columns. Theon watched the names of designer storefronts pass by and observed well-dressed pedestrians walking along in polished heels, clutching handbags priced at more than a year’s worth of his rent.

“My family sells ingredients to them,” he told Ramsay. “Highgarden gets all of their fish from us, and some of their shellfish.” The oysters and mussels, but not the crustaceans – if one asked Asha about crab, she would sneer and look down her hawkish nose and inform in no uncertain terms that they were the roaches of the sea, and lobster was worse. One should never even try to mention shrimp around her unless they wanted a derisive rant accompanied by sneers of contempt.

“Really?”

“Yeah, we’re quite sought after in the restaurant circuit. Ours is the best.” Theon liked to make it sound as if he were a part of the company, despite that the most he ever did was help Asha clean fish at the market if he had nothing else to do on an early morning. It was nice, sometimes, on those days; they often bantered, and between sales Theon would use Asha’s knife to pry open fresh oysters to eat, while they were still wet with seawater and tasting of the salty breath of ocean air.

“That’s quite remarkable.” Ramsay sounded genuinely impressed. “What company is it? I assumed Highgarden got their fish locally, I just would never have guessed it was from a family-owned business.”

“It’s called Ten Towers Fishing Company.” There was always a smugness to be felt when informing people of the company his mother’s family owned: he was more than just the Starks’ foster boy, see? His family had a successful company that was the sole merchant of the most highly rated and expensive restaurant in the city. Never mind that Theon didn’t live with them – even if his uncle had more than enough money to raise two – that wasn’t the point.

Ramsay tapped his fingers against the wheel and nodded contemplatively. “How nice. But a shame you’ve never been able to taste your fish after they’ve passed through Highgarden’s kitchens. I suppose my pick for tonight was a good one then, yes?”

“A free dinner is always good, no matter the restaurant,” quipped Theon, and then he flushed with embarrassment because damn, didn’t that make him sound like a fucking panhandler? He didn’t accept the date just to bum a free meal. But then Ramsay laughed again, and the sudden tension in Theon’s shoulders eased.

It wasn’t until Ramsay was pulling his car up to the front of the restaurant, where a valet was standing in uniform and a crowd of people waiting to be seated was clustered outside of the entrance, that Theon remembered that they had only made the dinner date two days ago and Highgarden usually had a waiting list to dine of at least a month. But Ramsay didn’t hesitate as he exited and handed his keys to the valet, and Theon already had his left foot out of the car and on the ground when Ramsay came around to help him out. He shut the passenger door for Theon and then walked with him up to the restaurant, where he bypassed the line and went to the hostess.

“Table for two for Ramsay Bolton,” he told the hostess, who was slight and curly-haired and smiled at Theon in a way that made him compulsively return it.

“Of course, Mr. Bolton. We have your table waiting for you. Please follow me.”

Theon and Ramsay followed the hostess, who led them not to the center of the restaurant, but to a small table directly beside one of the large front windows. The hostess gestured and stepped aside, and Ramsay moved in front of Theon to pull out one of the chairs for him. Theon sat with a polite word of thanks, and then Ramsay sat as well.

“Your server will be over to get your drink orders in a few moments,” said the hostess, before moving away and returning to her place at the front of the restaurant. As she left, Ramsay pulled the drinks menu closer towards himself and ran a cursory gaze over it.

“How would you feel about sharing a bottle of Arbor gold?” he asked Theon, who smirked.

“No cherry syrup tonight?” Theon challenged teasingly. Ramsay simply shook his head.

“Not tonight. I’ve planned on this evening being purely romantic, and I only have my dates consume cherry when I’m intending to ravish them afterwards.”

With a start of surprise, Theon felt himself blush. “Do I not look worth ravishing?” he asked, somewhat breathlessly. Ramsay glanced up to him, then ran his eyes down to where the collar of Theon’s jacket was grazing his clavicle, and the low neckline of Theon’s shirt.

“Not at all. You look entirely too enticing this evening. But despite my behavior this past weekend, I’m actually the kind of man who prefers to move slowly. My apologies for my behavior on Saturday, but I simply couldn’t resist myself.” His sharp eyes pierced through Theon’s like knives, and Theon could feel his chest growing hotter as he felt Ramsay was looking straight past his skin, past the jelly of his eyes and through his skull to his brains. “Starting tonight, however, I’d like to play by the unwritten rule: we save the first kiss for the second date.”

Theon raised his eyebrows. “A little past first kisses, aren’t we?” He remembered tracing his own swollen lips after their encounter, and the sodden state of his jeans. His knees still ached and there were still bruises on the back of his head from scraping against the rough wall.

“Oh, that wasn’t us,” Ramsay dismissively waved his hand, though there was a playfulness in his expression. “That was some other pretty, young man in a stained silk shirt, and someone who was far too enamored by him to think clearly or be held responsible for his actions.” His teeth glinted as he bared them in a smile.

“Is that so?”

“Very much so. But it’s a new night, isn’t it? And instead of a seedy bar, here we are at a lovely restaurant about to share a criminally delicious bottle of wine. That is, if you don’t mind Arbor gold.”

Theon shook his head and turned up the corners of his mouth just slightly. “I don’t mind Arbor gold. It will go quite well with the trout.”

“Is that what you’d recommend? You haven’t even read the menu.”

Theon pulled one of the paper menus towards him with his fingertips and traced the small selection with his eyes. After a few moments, he turned his chin up to meet Ramsay’s eyes and grinned. “Yes. It’s what I’d recommend.”

Their server arrived at that moment, another young lady who had sapphires dangling from her earlobes that cast little flickers of light on the side of her dark, slender neck. She smiled and asked for their drink order.

“I think we’d like to order our food now as well, if that’s alright,” said Ramsay, and she nodded. “A bottle of the Arbor gold, and two orders of the trout. And for starters, the oysters and the chef’s choice salad.”

The server left and returned minutes later with a bottle of wine and a carafe of water. She set both atop the table, and then poured Ramsay and Theon the water in the stemless of their two glasses. Theon sipped his – it tasted of mineral, and not chlorine like the tap water from his flat. As he did, Ramsay poured the wine into Theon’s crystal goblet, and the flickering candle that was perched at the side of their table shone through it and cast gold-tinged light onto the polished tabletop.

“So, tell me about yourself,” Ramsay prodded after he had poured a glass of wine for his own.

“What do you want to know?” Theon took a tentative sip of the wine, and found it to be delightfully dry and flavorful. Unlike Robb, Theon usually disliked sweet drinks; a heady, cloying wine to him was nearly as distasteful as one that was fizzy.

Ramsay seemed to consider him. “Truthfully? Everything. But I plan on seeing you for a good while yet, so we have time. Why don’t we start with your interests?”

The butterflies were back, apprehensive though they were, because Theon wasn’t sure he would live up to Ramsay’s clearly esteemed expectations for him. He trailed a finger through the condensation that was beading on his glass of water as he tried to think of what to say.

“I enjoy archery,” he said, the conversation he’d had with Robb and Jon the day before still on his mind, making his memories of medieval fairs weightless at the surface of his thoughts. “I used to shoot competitively, but recently I haven’t had the time.”

Ramsay seemed impressed. “That’s fascinating. I don’t think I’ve met someone who participated in that sport before.”

“Yes, it’s not quite as popular these days as something like football, is it?”

“No, it isn’t.” The corner of Ramsay’s mouth turned up and he took a sip out of his own wine glass, wetting his lips with the pale-colored aperitif. “How old were you when you started?”

“I was nine.” It had been not long after he’d first come to the Starks, during the winter holiday. The family always used the winter holiday – and the spring, and several weeks of the summer one – to retreat to their holiday cottage (though it could hardly be called as such, for it was as large as a house and elegantly furnished) in the Northern Mountains. In the warmer months, they enjoyed riding horseback on the trails, an activity that Catelyn, Bran and Robb enjoyed especially. They hiked year-round, and on days when Ned took Bran and Arya to rock-climb, Catelyn stayed indoors and read with Sansa while Robb, Jon and Theon explored the wood that surrounded them. In the winter, the family participated in snow sports – Sansa was curiously the only one of them other than Ned who preferred snowboard rather than skis – and hunted game, for the weather at that time of year was often too harrowing to bother descending to the nearest town for groceries.

It had been the hunting that introduced Theon to the bow and arrow. Traditionalist, obstinate Ned did not own firearms, and preferred to catch his game using archery and trapping. On that holiday, the first Theon had ever spent in that mountain cottage, Ned had taken Theon alone – the only of the children who was of the age that Ned had deemed appropriate for such activities – into the trees and taught him how to fire an arrow. Theon had been apprehensive of the task and nervous of the man who had still been barely more than a daunting stranger. Ned’s big, warm hands on his as he taught Theon how to nock the arrow and pull the string had sent shivers down his spine (not of fear, no, but of timid longing, for his youthful skin had been starving for affection), and his rumbling voice in Theon’s ears had made him jittery and lightheaded. But at the first release of the bowstring and the sound of that arrow rushing through the crisp wintery air, of it thudding into the tree for which he’d been aiming – though it had landed much lower than he’d intended it – Theon had felt his uncertainty alleviate and he’d smiled, a small smile that had felt real and not just polite.

Theon had bow-hunted alongside Ned on holidays ever since then, sometimes even during the warm seasons despite that the grocery shop was only an hour’s drive down the mountain road. When Robb and Jon had grown old enough to participate, they had found that they hadn’t enjoyed it as much as Theon did, nor been as talented. By the time of Theon’s last family holiday with the Starks, the only child other than him who hunted with Ned still was Arya, who enjoyed the bow but not as much as she loved fencing, and in fact had more fun tying knots and setting traps with Bran and Rickon.

“Did you start off with competition?” wondered Ramsay, and Theon shook his head.

“No, it began recreationally. Hunting game in the mountains. I can hit a doe in the eye at thirty meters.” He said it casually, successfully belying his pride in his voice but perhaps not disguising it by the straightening of his spine and the swell of his chest. “When I was eleven, my foster parents began to pay for me to participate athletically.” Ned and Catelyn hadn’t done so until after they had decided to keep him; but that year, for his birthday, they had given him a longbow of his own, a beautiful tool that he’d cared for lovingly and was now gathering dust in the Starks’ lower-floor storage room. He’d stopped using it after moving out, when they hadn’t extended invitation to him for holiday retreats and his work schedule hadn’t allowed him time for hobbies.

At that moment, their server came with the starters. The oysters were arranged on a plate, six of them in a circle around a small bowl of white wine mignonette; the salad was in a dish, leaves of baby spinach garnished with what looked like grated truffles and caviar. Theon had to stop himself from whistling, impressed.

Ramsay offered Theon one of the small plates that their server had deposited, and Theon accepted it gladly and took two oysters to it. He ate his first quickly after pouring some of the accompanying sauce into the gently bowled shell; it was lovely and rich, with a biting hint of the ocean from whence it had come. Theon appreciated it, but he couldn’t help but feel that these mollusks tasted better when eaten outdoors, with the bustle of merchants and buyers surrounding him and saltwater spilling from within the shell after it had been pried open.

“Foster parents?” asked Ramsay, and Theon realized his revelation. But Ramsay didn’t look disenchanted. “I suppose that explains your situation. How you live alone, I mean.” The man hesitated and corrected himself. “I don’t mean it negatively, I apologize. It was just my observation. I lived with my father until I’d gone to university, despite my graduating late. I couldn’t imagine turning a young student out like that, unless...” Chuckling, he shook his head and attempted to move some of the salad onto his plate without spilling any bit of it. “My bumbling tongue. You needn’t respond to that mess. I was just thinking aloud.”

“It’s alright,” Theon said, feeling strangely stirred. That Ramsay had understood the reason for Theon’s situation and found it distasteful, no matter how mildly, was more than anyone else had done. Even Robb still talked of Theon’s independence as though it was something to be envious of. “It’s true, how it is. I’d really have liked to stay at home until I graduated.” He averted his gaze from Ramsay’s attentive expression and sipped again at his wine. “Although I suppose if that was so, I wouldn’t be with you here, tonight.”

“I suppose not.” Ramsay looked satisfied, and their conversation drifted as they finished their starters. After their dishes were taken away, the main course was served, and this time the trout was truly at it’s most delicious, and the golden wine was a perfect pairing. They ate slowly, and talked without many pauses. Ramsay was interesting, and seemed to find Theon fascinating in a way that made the room seem brighter and louder.

“Would you share a dessert with me?” Ramsay asked Theon when they had finished, and Theon nodded. He allowed Theon to choose from the menu, and the sweet potato panna cotta was sweet and lovely and not too rich following the lightness of the fish.

Theon didn’t look at the check when it was brought, for it must have been more than ten dragons  - maybe more than twenty, depending on how the wine had been priced – and despite Ramsay’s gentlemanly behavior it still made Theon feel guilty when he would never be able to return such a gesture. But Ramsay made no comment as he paid with his card, and when they had finished he smiled as he lead Theon out of the restaurant with a hand at his lower back.

They stood in the brisk night air as they waited for the valet to return with Ramsay’s vehicle, quiet and companionable but with an undercurrent of electric tension.

“I had a wonderful evening tonight,” Ramsay told him, and Theon nodded and returned his smile.

“I did too.”

“Would you like to go out again this Friday?”

Theon opened his mouth to agree, but remembered that he was working an eight-hour shift that evening. “I can’t.” Quickly, he mulled his schedule over in his mind. “I could take you up on that breakfast offer, though. On Saturday?”

“I look forward to it. Let’s plan for nine o’ clock.”

Theon agreed. The drive back to Theon’s flat was quiet, streetlamps beaming on the side of Theon’s face and catching in Ramsay’s pale eyes. Again, Ramsay exited the car to help Theon out of his seat, and he walked Theon up to the door of the building.

In heavy silence, they looked at each other for a moment, Theon’s face tilted only slightly down to meet Ramsay’s gaze. His heart was beating heavily in his chest, and Ramsay smiled as if he could hear it.

“We’ll wait for the second date,” he said simply, quietly, intent in his eyes. “Goodnight, darling.”

He returned to his car. Theon watched him drive away, and only when the vehicle had vanished did he go up to his flat.

That night, he fell asleep feeling full.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Come and bug me on [tumblr](https://goddamn-i-really-died-for-this.tumblr.com/)


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